This invention relates to a system for forming and baking food items such as pizza pies from plastic material such as pizza dough. The invention includes in particular apparatus for tamping dough into a desired pie shape.
Pizza is a popular food item in restaurants. A number of restaurants, including several widely-known franchise chains, specialize in preparing and serving pizza pies of various sizes with various toppings.
The preparation of pizza in a restaurant tends to be labor-intensive and concomitantly expensive. The pie must be formed from a mass of dough; the image of a cook tossing and spinning dough over his or her head has long been one associated with "pizzerias." After the pie is formed, it must be covered with appropriate toppings, placed in an oven for baking, and removed after an appropriate baking time. For maximum customer satisfaction the pizza should be served fresh from the oven. All of these steps can require expensive human involvement.
The prior art discloses a number of devices for automating various steps in the pizza preparation process. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,060,027, to Jenny, shows a stepwise advancing conveyor band and work stations along the conveyor band at which ingredients are applied to an edible product. As another example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,780,643, to Papai, shows a machine featuring an indexing conveyor belt which delivers partially baked pizza pie shells to various filling stations where tomato paste, grated cheese, and pepperoni are automatically applied.
Some of the prior devices are designed to form a mass of dough into a pie shape. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,190,483 and 3,390,645, each to Pacilio, describe pie-forming apparatus which spin the dough mass to simulate a human cook's tossing and spinning action. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,949,660 and 4,116,119, each to Kuhlman; 3,735,692, to Marchignoni; 3,814,005, to Widdel; and 4,251,549, to Fournet, describes apparatus for pressing or stamping dough into a pie shape. U.S. Pat. No. 3,381,632, to Pontecorvo, on the other hand, describe apparatus wherein dough is fed between male and female rollers and thereby flattened into a thin wafer.
Forming a pie by pressing, stamping, or rolling dough, unfortunately, can press a substantial amount of air out of the dough, resulting in a pie which, when baked, is undesirably brittle and cracker-like in consistency. Such a pie may be regarded as less tasty by customers, and there is some indication that it may be less digestible, than a pie in which air remains in the dough.
It is well known to flatten dough into a pie shape by tamping it with the fingers. Where pizza dough is concerned, this method of flattening is thought to be advantageous over other methods such as pressing, rolling, or stamping, because tamping is thought to allow more air to remain in the dough. In particular, the crust of the resulting pie, when baked, is believed to be tastier and more digestible than ones formed by one of the other methods.
Unfortunately, the procedure of hand tamping is time consuming and generally expensive. The procedure is also highly variable, since it is unlikely that any two persons tamp dough in an equivalent manner or with equivalent results. It is also unlikely that the same person will consistently turn out uniform products because of a number of factors.